Cuttack corporators quizzed on cyclone relief loot

Cuttack: Vigilance sleuths quizzed corpoartors of Cuttack Municipal Corporation(CMC) and officials allegedly involved in the looting of cyclone relief for the third day on Wednesday and recorded their statements.

Cuttack vigilance superintendent of police B K Patnaik, who is supervising the probe, however, refused to divulge details saying investigation was still on.

Former commissioner of the civic body N R Mohapatra and suspended deputy commissioner J N Kujur also appeared before the sleuths during the day, vigilance department sources said.

Mohapatra and Kujur`s residences were raided by anti-corruption wing of the police yesterday during the large-scale searches.

At least 30 teams of the anti-corruption wing of police simultaneously searched the houses of 29 CMC corporators, including that of 21 ruling party corporators from early morning to late night, the sources said.

So far vigilance inquiries have found that at least 27,000 people of Cuttack city were evacuated on October 12, the day Cyclone Phailin struck, to safer places and put up in 72 shelter houses.

The civic body had decided to provide the evacuees with cooked food for three days and procured the materials. But its officials could not run the free kitchens with the help of government employees and instead allowed the corporators and other private parties to distribute dry food materials among the affected people.

Few ruling party corporators forcibly took away all the relief materials without accounting for them.
Following a public outcry, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday handed over the inquiry to the vigilance department.
Opposition Congress during the day mounted its demand for quashing the civic body council forthwith and arresting all corporators involved in the incident while terming the vigilance inquiry as an `eyewash`.